University of Auckland

This course offers an exploration of living religions in contemporary New Zealand, surveying the beliefs, traditions, and practices that are central to religious groups in New Zealand. It examines their interactions with contemporary culture both locally and globally. The course introduces the comparative study of religion, engaging in such topics as religion and ritual, exploring belief, and interfaith dialogue.

This class focuses on learning in formal and informal settings and addresses such questions as: Why do some things seem easier to learn than others? Why do we forget things we once knew, why some people learn faster or better than others? How do reinforcement, punishment, and modeling influence our behavior and what we learn? And, how is learning influenced by motivation?

This course focuses on practical aspects of corporate finance. Topics include concepts of value creation, risk and required rates of return, financial maths, capital budgeting, capital structure, and dividend policies.

This course examines the role of music in the construction and reinforcement of personal, social, and cultural identities. Students examine various case studies and world music examples discussed in ethnomusicological literature. Topics include the ways gender, class, and ethnic identities are conveyed through music; the role of music in the process of our recognition of self and others; emerging East-Asian youth identities through recent production of Chinese pop songs; music that accompanies specific rituals or ceremonies; and elements of African music and religion and their fusion with Cuban-African culture. Students examine the relationship between music and their own identity, and how they are constructed as cultural and social beings.

This course explores the diversity of animals and plants in New Zealand, including endemic, native, and introduced species. Additional topics include bio-geographical and evolutionary relationships; community structure and inter-relationships; behavior and ecology; Maori perspectives in biology; current conservation; environmental, social, and animal welfare; and economic issues relevant to New Zealand biology.

An in-depth study of a figure whose thought has had a major impact on the development of one or more religious traditions. It includes the critical study of selected texts by the chosen thinker (where these have survived), and of texts and traditions related to the thinker. In 2020 we will be looking at Martin Luther (1483-1546). His protest against indulgences in 1517 unintentionally sparked the religious, cultural and political upheavals of the Reformation era. 2020 marks the 500th anniversary of Luther's excommunication by the pope. We study some of the works that got him excommunicated, as well as some of the works whose impact continues to be felt in the present. In addition to reading these texts in English translation, we also spend time thinking about the religious, cultural and political context from which these texts emerged half a millennium ago.

This course explores applications of modern algebra, number theory, and combinatorics to information theory, with a focus on cryptography, secret sharing and error-correction. The course covers numbers, complexity, cryptography, groups and elliptic curves, fields, polynomials, secret sharing, and error-correcting codes. Students gain experience using GAP, a system for computational algebra.

This course explores Irish identity, history, and, culture through analysis and discussion of literary works. The course also examines political and cultural aspects of the Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

An examination of the nature of historical inquiry with reference to New Zealand's educational past; questions why education has been analyzed largely as something planned rather than something experienced and introduces oral history as methodology. Selected aspects of the educational histories of other countries discussed for comparative analysis.